It will be in the last place you look.

Where is peace? Person after person, nation after nation, generation after generation we are searching for peace. We try so many different things to try to find it. We enforce new laws, elect different presidents, start new wars, end old wars, save people and kill people all for PEACE. We have tried pluralism, socialism, genocides, and democracy and have not found it. We look for it in ourselves, in our leaders, in our programs, and in our abilities but can not find it. We know that we had it and that we want it but where did we leave it?

     When I was missing something as a child my mom always told me "It will be the last place you look." I think the same could be said of our search for peace. When we gained the knowledge of good and evil we also forgot something; we forgot peace. We left peace in the garden and will find it in the last place we will look. The last place we will look is in the new garden, heaven. Maybe that is why gardens always seem so peaceful to us. They are a snapshot memory of the long forgotten, often searched for peace. Our world won't find peace until it looks in the very last thing that will exist, heaven.

Trees

Psalm 1:2-4

2 whose delight is in the law of the LORD,

and who meditates on his law day and night.

3 That person is like a tree planted by streams of water,

which yields its fruit in season

And whose leaf does not wither—

Whatever they do prospers.

4 Not so the wicked!

They are like chaff

That the wind blows away.

Psalm 37:35-36

35 I have seen a wicked and ruthless man

Flourishing like a luxuriant native tree,

36 but he soon passed away and was no more;

Though I looked for him, he could not be found.

            So much of my life and study recently have been focused on the righteous and the wicked. We are idealizing the righteous life as being full of blessings, growth, ease, joy, and stability but this doesn’t match up to real life. We are looking at the imagery of the Bible and only see what we want, what is beautiful. We focus on areas such as Psalm 1 but when do take in the imagery of Psalm 37? We focus on the blessings that should be ours but when do we take in the whole entity of reality? That is what I have been so focused on this semester… Why is the wicked man’s prosperity equal to or surpassing of the righteous man’s? I think part of our answer comes from the imagery of “trees” with in Psalm.

            Psalm 1 feeds our philosophy of good winning out over the bad. The righteous man is one who sees blessings. That tree has the blessings of the source of life, streams of water, and of beneficial result, bearing fruit. But does this imagery resemble real life? I think it can when we think about the seasons of a tree. Within a cycle of seasons a tree undergoes new growth and life, then flourishes and bears fruit, after which can come a time of drought, which leads to a time of being dormant. If this is a righteous tree then it will survive. Even though we face times of spiritual drought we will make it to the next season. Even when we are flourishing under God’s blessings we will not stay that way forever. In order to have new growth and bear more fruit we must have times of being dormant. Being stagnant in our growth can lead us back to the giver of life so that we can flourish once more.

            Psalm 37 reminds us that the righteous aren’t the only ones who will flourish. This is what we see amongst the reality of the world. Everywhere we look we see evil, lost people prosper and have everything that we think we want. Psalms 37 reminds us that we aren’t the only trees. Others will grow up around us but they will not last. The wicked will have their time because that’s all they get. Time, the time the wicked have here on earth, is a mere fragment of eternity. The wicked will have their time to flourish because they will be blown away. They are the trees that will not last.  The righteous trees will survive and thrive throughout eternity; our blessings are not bound with in time. 

So do not anger because the wicked trees flourish for the moment, for moments in time is all they have.

           

Living words

Today in expository preaching we talked about how to take our sermons from just a speech on a text to a sharing of the living word. We have a lot of issues, especially as OCC students, to treat the bible, our sermons, and our papers as mere articles that we dissect and critique. Where do we go wrong? What makes us view our papers and sermons as a dwelling on the living words and not just studying mere words. How do we make our work devotional, life changing, and applicable? How do we do this not just to our audience but our own deprived souls? How do we make the living words living works in our lives?

We have to connect it to our humanity. Taking it from words bound within our language to a working example of our life, our humanity. The living words of the Bible are not just stories but it is the dissemination of how we are are to be integrated into daily Christian life. It is connected to more than our language but to our hearts. our struggles, our joy, and our desolation. For our papers and sermons to be more than just a critical review of an ancient book it must be integrated into every area of humanity, every area of our life.

The presentation of living words should cause reflection on our fallen former, exertion for a pure present, and an encouragement for living a faithful future. Our papers and sermons are not just assignments but must be the integration of God in our lives.

My color theory

  I am a pretty firm believer in the fact that things are not just black and white. There is not always a clear cut right or wrong choice. Killing, lying, stealing are obviously clearly right or wrong choices. However what about who to date, where to go to college, where to serve. Everyday we are presented with choices that aren't clearly right or wrong. The term "gray areas" is familiar to all of us and this is where we generally apply this term. We see a huge section of our lives as a gray area.

   This area of our life we get to use the discernment and critical thinking that God has installed in all of us. Calling the non distinct situations of life the gray area is something that I am processing in my life. Calling it the gray area puts so many limits on it. To combine the black and white (the right and wrong) into gray is to say that there are bad parts and good parts, not that it is just neutral. And when is anything every just neutral? Weren't we given colors? Why don't we use more than just black, white, and gray to distinguish the many paths of our lives.

   So this is my color theory. We have been given the feelings of calm, passion, energy, fun, and they are the colors that will help us distinguish the choices in our lives. I want to go beyond a life of black and white or the confusion of living a life that is one big gray blob.

   Many times in my life as I have been searching for the right decision to make I am drawn towards a certain choice because of its characteristics and what it will bring into my life. There are times that I have needed to add an element of fun in my life, the representation of fun in life is yellow. I had to see beyond the black and white, beyond the many options held within gray and find the yellow choice and that was the right choice for me.

  Sometimes we might need to become passionate or are drawn towards the person, school, career that will spark our passion. Yet again sometimes we need to calm down. We have to not discern between black and white but between the passionate reds and the calming blues of life.

  This is something that I am still developing my take on and processing its application to its fullest. What I do know is that life is hard, choices are not clear, and we are allowed to make these choicest for a reason. We are not puppets but are capable beings who are able to distinguish our needs and wants to best fit the life we desire. I don't want to spend my life walking down a gray road searching out the black and white paths that I might intersect with. I want to LIVE my life exploring the passion, fun, soothing, energizing journeys that my life's path intertwines with. I want to see the choices of reds, yellows, blues, and greens that all enrich my mundane gray life.

Rebellion

Today my mind is going crazy. This might be due to the fact that I drank two cups of coffee and took a  b-complex vitamin all before 7 am. My mind is energized and is spastically delving into the many topics that are consuming my mind. I want to share just one for right now.Unlike my other thoughts of the day this is just a little one. He entered my mind randomly, quickly processed, and now is ready to be tucked back into the recesses of my mind. This thought is the different faces of rebellion. More so how rebellion is inescapable for our lives.

My thought process went something like this: We (Christians) view the secular world as people who are "living in rebellion." But rebellion has infiltrated itself in more than just the secular world or culture. It is given that due to the fall of creation, culture is now in rebellion. Because culture is in rebellion the "church world" is in rebellion against culture. We have created our own separate culture filled with veggie tales, christian private schools, christian apparel, christian music, christian politics, christian books, christian movies, christian jewelry, christian anything to set us apart (to rebel) against secular culture.

In the five seconds that I spent processing this an issue instantly came to mind. If we are training our children to rebel from everything the world offers what is that instilling in them. Hate towards the lost? Mindless acceptance of anything "christian"? Is it instilling a rebellious spirit that will rebel from Christianity? I don't really know all the paths it could lead, but I do see some danger.

Growing up I was taught that Christian things are good, secular things are bad. I am grateful for this on some level because it did protect me for a time. But I was strong willed enough as a child that as I reached adolescence my critical thinking skills overtook any instant acceptance I had towards rules, ideas, or philosophies on how we should be living the Christian life. I had to work and am still working at not rebelling from culture or "christian" things and integrating them both. There is goodness in secular culture, there can be a balance. We can flee from evil while still influencing culture and being apart of society, even secular society.

Its time to stop rebelling and start integrating.

Blueberry Struesel Muffins!

Okay so here are my favorite muffins to make! So good.  These are Blueberry Struesel muffins with iced blueberries. So here's what you'll need to make these babies.

Muffin mix (This is my basic mix that I use for every muffin recipe)
2 1/2 cups all purpose flower
1 tblsp baking powder
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/3 cup milk
1 large egg
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 cup vanilla yogurt
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup frozen blueberries (that have been heated up)
1/2 cup frozen blueberries (still frozen)
1/4 cup softened butter

Mix butter, sugar, egg, vanilla, almond, and yogurt until nice and creamy. Then add all the dry ingredients. Blend until it is nice with thick. Then add the blueberries (hot and frozen) By using the hot blueberries the juice will flavor the mix and turn the muffins blue. Which is fitting since they are BLUEberry muffins.

Spoon the batter into a muffin pan that has been rubbed down with butter. Then top with the struesel mix. And here is how you will make that.
You will need:
4 tablespoons of flour
1/2 cup of sugar
3 tablespoons of chilled (but not rock solid) butter
2 teaspoons of cinnamon
You will cut this with a fork until it is in fine chunks.

Then just sprinkle on top of the muffin batter.

Bake for 20 minutes or until golden brown. While they are baking it is the perfect time to make the sugar iced blueberries.

Simply roll 1/4 cup of frozen blueberries in 1/2 cup of sugar. (there will be extra sugar but just toss it) Just press these guys into the piping hot muffins AS SOON as they get out of the oven.

Voila! Blueberry Struesel Muffins!

Vegetarian Nachos- SUPER EASY!

Hey guys so this is going to be my first recipe blog. Some of it is going to be really simple such as this recipe and others might be a little more complicated. They are all things I have come up with and love. So here are my Veggie Nachos. You will need 3/4 cup of sliced mushrooms, 1 cup of fresh spinach, 3/4 cup of cheese, 3 teaspoons of Tabasco, 3 tablespoons of sour cream, and a couple handfuls of chips.

Start off with a little bit of hot evoo and add mushrooms and 1 teaspoon of tabasco. Cook until the are brown and tender then set aside.

Next take the spinach and put it in the pan that the mushrooms just came from. Then just add another teaspoon of tabasco.

Cook until the spinach is dark green and tender. Be careful to not over cook the spinach.

Layer half the chips, cheese, mushrooms and spinach.

Then add another layer. I like to put the nachos in the oven for 10 minutes or until they are all melty and wonderful, but you could always just pop it in the microwave.

  

Top with sour cream and the rest of the tabasco then enjoy!